Son of Necessity
by Peradan
Summary: Luke Skywalker, fifty times. A sequel to "Daughter of Time."


**1: Comfort**

Luke lifted his head, sensing Leia in the Ewok village, Vader in his ship (_my sister, my father_) - for the first time in over twenty years, he could feel his family around him.

**2: Kiss**

At twenty-two, Luke hadn't kissed anyone except his aunt Beru; other people sometimes kissed _him_, but he never returned their kisses, or enjoyed them, or felt much of anything besides discomfort.

**3: Soft**

Luke was twenty-three before he kissed anyone of his own volition, carelessly leaning down to press his lips against Leia's smooth cheek; he was surprised at himself, surprised that it wasn't awkward or unpleasant - but she was safe now, his _sister_, and he loved her.

**4: Pain**

It didn't matter that the murdered children were strangers; they had suffered, they had died in terror, and their tormentors should pay for it - _would_ pay for it, Luke decided, and for once it was a satisfaction to remember that he and Leia were Darth Vader's children.

**5: Potatoes**

When Luke thought of his childhood on Tatooine, the mundane and horrifying mixed together freely: Uncle Owen's hand resting protectively on his shoulder, Biggs' cousin tortured and killed by Sand People, dreams of burning, Aunt Beru's potatoes.

**6: Rain**

At eighteen, Luke had never seen rain, only read of it in stories; by twenty, he'd seen it dozens of times, heard his fellow pilots complaining about the inconvenience - but Luke never did; he just tilted his face to the sky, and let the precious water pour over him.

**7: Chocolate**

Luke didn't like caf any more than Leia did, and he actually admitted it, so when Han took it upon himself to scrounge up chocolate for him, Leia always stole half of it.

**8: Happiness**

"I am Leia Skywalker Organa," his sister snapped, her voice cold enough to burn, and despite everything, Luke smiled.

**9: Telephone**

When Vader called to him across space, he didn't use the odd, distant _Skywalker_, but _Luke_ and _son_ - and though a part of Luke's dazed mind recoiled in horror, the rest of him echoed the fierce attachment he heard in Vader's voice, whispered _Father_ -

**10: Ears**

Force-sensitives, Luke knew, resisted cloning, but years of experimentation had resulted in this one perfect Skywalker clone (_mine? Father's?_ he didn't know): toes, fingers, ears, all in order, midichlorians swimming in the blood, unnatural obedience wired into the brain.

**11: Name**

Luke managed the introductions, as always: "I'm Luke Skywalker, and this is my sister, Princess Leia, and my brother-in-law, Han Solo -" he paused - "Organa."

**12: Sensual**

Chilled, Luke shut his eyes, letting the Force flood through his senses; he felt the smooth polished floor beneath his feet, the labyrinthine halls surrounding him, the distant flickers of life throughout the cloning facility, heard the murmur of voices - _children's_ voices.

**13: Death**

Luke felt oddly divided: happy, of course, for his friends, the Rebellion, his father, even himself, but grief and remorse tore at him, too, and he couldn't say which predominated until Leia pulled him aside and whispered, "Were you right?"

**14: Sex**

For Luke, love had nothing to do with sex, and sex had nothing to do with him; as far as he was concerned, love was the stench of dead tauntaun - Leia's hands stroking his hair - the three of them with their arms around each other, laughing together - lightning ripping through his father's body - Leia taking Han's hand as Luke spoke in unfamiliar but very sincere Alderaanian - the small red girl now resting in the crook of his arm.

**15: Touch**

Luke couldn't bring himself to hint at his suspicions to Han and Leia, or even his father; instead, he slid his hand inside the analyzer, and recoiled less from the jab of the needle than the words that flashed across the screen.

**16: Weakness**

If there'd been any proper courts left in Imperial City, they'd have called it self-defense, but Luke knew he'd left the Temple expecting to kill - _intending_ to kill.

**17: Tears**

Luke found a stranger kneeling before his family's graves - a tall, dark man who introduced himself as Kitster Banai, and who wept when Luke explained why he'd returned home.

**18: Speed**

The Jedi Order under Luke Skywalker and Leia Skywalker Organa was renowned for its versatility, independence, diplomacy, and for accomplishing it all in some of the fastest starships in the galaxy - the last of which Luke considered less an achievement than an inevitability.

**19: Wind**

Luke would never say so, but Leia's planet was one of the only places that could make him miss Tatooine - he didn't like New Alderaan, didn't like the sculpted landscapes and soft breezes, didn't like the suffocating luxury accorded the queen's brother, didn't like the way he was always _Queen Leia's brother_ there; it felt oddly like _Darth Vader's son_, as if he only existed at the edges of other, greater people's lives (and he would never say that either).

**20: Freedom**

Anakin's body, like Obi-Wan's and Yoda's, disappeared when he died, leaving only something small and metal that rattled around the armour - a transmitter, Luke realized, and without knowing quite why, closed his cybernetic fingers around the device and crushed it.

**21: Life**

The moment that Luke realized what he'd sensed, what that flash of resistance in Vader (_my father_) really meant, he knew that nothing would ever be the same.

**22: Jealousy**

He could never resent Leia, but when she talked about her childhood on peaceful, idyllic Alderaan, with doting parents who prized and encouraged all the things that made her extraordinary, Luke felt a burst of jealousy; his life had been so much easier, he'd been younger longer, hadn't been tortured until the Emperor, his planet was _still there_, and yet - and yet.

**23: Hands**

It was Han who mentioned the newest advancement in cybernetic technology, Leia who prodded him to take advantage of it, and Anakin who constantly lectured him about exploitable weaknesses; Luke ignored them until he realized they were all doing it for the exact same reason.

**24: Taste**

Anakin looked more corporeal every time he appeared and Luke was starting to feel as if he should offer him a drink; at the moment, however, he felt more like chopping his hand off again.

**25: Devotion**

Leia said he forgave more easily than she ever could, and Luke didn't know how to tell her that it wasn't forgiveness at all, what he did; it was just that when he loved someone no matter what, he really meant _no matter what._

**26: Forever**

Luke woke beside a long, winding, vaguely familiar river and sprang up as easily as he'd done throughout his youth; he wasn't surprised to see his smooth, twenty-year-old face reflected in the water, nor to hear his father's voice saying, "Luke, there you are - I hope you haven't been waiting long?"

**27: Blood**

It was Luke who found the records of their birth, when he finally managed to unlock Obi-Wan's chest - Luke who felt a sharp twisting sensation in his gut when he picked up the first of the twenty-two-year-old flimsis, and read _Skywalker, Leia Amidala_ -

**28: Sickness**

The baby wouldn't stop screaming, and Beru had been around enough children to tell the difference between normal infantile querulousness and real suffering; she laid her hand against Luke's hot forehead, and for everyone's sakes, prayed that the fever would pass.

**29: Melody**

The old Jedi, Luke had discovered, were generally warriors or mystics; he encouraged the new to follow the paths best suited to them, as long as they fell within the Order's policy of strict neutrality - but even he was surprised when Renisyra Talos decided she'd been called to compose the Order's music, and promptly presented him and Leia with their own themes (they might have been more discouraging if they'd been less thrilled).

**30: Star**

"What's that one?" said Bail, pointing up at the clear Naboo sky; by some chance, his gaze had landed on Aldera, at this distance accompanied by its long-dead planet, and Luke promptly declared bedtime - _this_ part of Bail's legacy, and Lyra's and Padmé's, was not for him to intrude upon.

**31: Home**

Luke couldn't keep himself from returning to Tatooine, and not as a stop in a yearly pilgrimage like Leia's; there was a sense of familiarity, of _belonging_ about it, and he felt more at peace there, walking through the dead city where his ancestors had lived, than he'd been anywhere else.

**32: Confusion**

Luke couldn't forget turning to the Dark Side, of course, but even years later, those few minutes between attacking his father and slicing off his hand remained a bewildering, disconcerting blank.

**33: Fear**

Luke unclipped his lightsaber, running his fingers over every scratch and dent, thinking of how natural it felt in his hand, of how easily he reached for it, of everything he'd done with it - of how he was never more a Jedi than when he ignored it, or cast it aside.

**34: Lightning/Thunder**

Luke was thirty when he discovered how to create Force-lightning; though he'd come to believe that nothing came exclusively of the Dark Side, he saw no reason to pass the discovery on.

**35: Bonds**

Leia insisted that he'd been adopted, just like her, that it didn't matter that she was _Leia Organa_ and he'd never been _Luke Lars_ - but Leia couldn't imagine a childhood spent longing for real parents; she'd _had_ real parents, he realized, and she didn't see that it was different for him.

**36: Market**

Luke didn't realize how much the galaxy had changed until he walked from the Temple to a small market, and nobody tried to kill him on the way; he suspected that nobody even _recognized_ him.

**37: Technology**

Luke noticed almost immediately that his new hand was stronger than his old had been, much, _much_ stronger, and faster too: but it didn't itch.

**38: Gift**

"Do you think I care if the galaxy despises Darth Vader slightly less than they do at the moment?" said Anakin, and Luke stared at him, for the first time holding out some hope that he _could_ be Leia's brother, without ruining her life, or denying his own identity.

**39: Smile**

"Well, once Leia decided she wanted to learn how to stop blasterfire with her mind, I figured someone'd have to keep the two of you fed," Han said, stepping over a pile of rubble, and Luke couldn't help but beam at them both.

**40: Innocence**

"I know that he's a clone," Luke said, giving his sister a sharp glance, "but upbringing is all that matters, isn't it?"

**41: Completion**

Luke and Leia were happy to leave the clone's - the _baby's_ imaginary mother at a name and a birth planet, but Han chortled at the thought of Luke so much as flirting with a woman, let alone marrying one, then spent hours concocting elaborate stories about how she'd been a dancer - and a smuggler - and an assassin - and a Jedi.

**42: Clouds**

Almost without exception, Luke believed in confronting the past, rather than leaving it to devour him from within; Bespin was one of those exceptions.

**43: Sky**

Luke couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been drawn to the unchecked freedom of the air and sky; after Cloud City, he remembered his uncle's then-inexplicable disapproval, and the Death Star trenches, and thought he understood it all now.

**44: Paradise**

Luke had never bothered to imagine what sort of world could produce the Emperor, but if he had, it certainly wouldn't have been Naboo.

**45: Hell**

Luke used to have terrible dreams of burning, fire pouring down his throat and peeling off his skin, and never knew why until his father mentioned what had happened at Mustafar, in the course of an extremely vocal disagreement with Obi-Wan.

**46: Sun**

Luke was _grateful_, but he couldn't help how miserable he was at home, how he felt as if some part of him had been cut away, as if his entire life were frozen in that moment when one sun sunk below the horizon and the other continued to shine, alone and dim.

**47: Moon**

"So this is Yavin," Anakin remarked, looking around with a sort of professional curiosity; it was more endurable than any amount of reassurance would have been.

**48: Waves**

Change, Luke decided, came less in leaps and bounds than in waves, building, feeding on itself, until finally it rose up and overwhelmed everything in its path - then he looked over his desk at a very small Tusken Raider, and smiled.

**49: Hair**

The Naberries reminded him of Leia, and not only because of the thick brown hair they all shared with her; it was subtler than that, a similarity in their direct gazes, their easy self-command, their air of prosperity: and Luke, remembering the scorching desolation of home, had never felt so wholly a child of the desert, a _Skywalker_.

**50: Supernova**

Luke's aunt had once told him that falling in love was like finding a missing part of yourself, becoming whole, and feeling it with all the power of an exploding sun - so when he met Leia, he knew he must be in love with her.


End file.
